Today brings a joint venture with Anthony and HyperShort newcomer, Ethan Lawrence, my brother. A great concept envisioning racing on the moon. Ethan wrote the feature ASYLUM and shows like PRETENDER & EUREKA. So get ready…

“LUNACY” by Anthony and Ethan Lawrence

“You gonna be there next month, Doc?” Ronny grinned because he knew the answer before he asked the question. They all looked up to Doc. He was the King of Lunatics.

“Hell, yes.”

They were tough men and women who lived life on the edge, engaged in adventure so extreme that death was a constant threat. They gained reputations and the sobriquet of “Lunatics” by racing on the moon where lunar gravity, cold, craters, and the speed of their self-constructed fusion-powered rocket vehicles made the sport extremely dangerous. Navigating with MPS that was made possible by Japan’s SELENE 5 and China’s CHANGE’E 3 lunar orbiters, it was NASCAR on the moon and a hell of lot riskier. Twenty-three men and women, their wardrobe and ships adorned with Earth Side advertisements, had died in horrific and spectacular crashes on the moon’s surface since the races began.

It was a sport that, despite (or because of) the dangers to even those serving as pit crews, had increased in galactic popularity since the turn of the century, and 2300 promised new thrills and new jeopardy for a small band of high risk space pilots. The winners of the sport now had an even more hazardous pursuit to aim for, by moving on to illegal interplanetary competition in newly invented racing spacecraft that were now able to achieve some amazing targeted velocities.

“Be goin’ ta Mars next year,” Doc stated simply with that air of confidence that many misinterpreted as arrogance. But Doc just knew what he could do and never doubted himself.

Doc’s Mars voyage would come sooner than he predicted. When the August Intergalactic race competitors were neck-and-neck around the 6,784 mile circumference of the Earth Side along the moon’s Equatorial Region, the veteran pilot pushed his AT117 Raptor moon racer to its maximum capacity. Determined to beat Ronnie, he opened her up along Southwestern Oceanus Procellarum and, when his velocity began to exceed the moon’s gravitational field strength of 1.6N/ kg, the sleek vehicle suddenly became airborne where there was no air.

Ronnie glanced up through his silica glass dome windshield and saw his best friend soaring up into black space and he whispered hoarsely to himself with secret admiration.